“It was about making my internal rhythm match the birds’ rhythm,” she tells Screen
Claire Foy is not one of those actors who keeps a memento from every set. “I don’t have enough space in my house!” But she still has a hawk’s hood from H Is For Hawk, a leather head covering used for training. “That was just by accident, those hoods were always in my bag,” she laughs.
It is a sign of how immersed Foy was in playing Cambridge academic Helen Macdonald as she navigated the death of her father (played by Brendan Gleeson).
Macdonald decided to raise a goshawk named Mabel to help navigate her grief – a process Macdonald detailed in her 2014 bestselling memoir of the same name. (Macdonald used the pronouns she/her at the time of writing the book, but now uses the pronouns they/them.)
“Like most people I found the book visceral, a vivid experience, difficult at times to read – the book was very powerful,” says Foy, who knew the film would have to be its own creature, and did not want to spend too much time learning Macdonald’s mannerisms. She had just one pre-shoot Zoom call with the author.
“It was very important for me to meet Helen, purely to respect what I was about to do, and to acknowledge the significance and the generosity of what they were allowing me to undertake. It’s my job as an actor to do all the work. It’s not Helen’s job to fill in any blanks. I feel like the book offered so much to me, because it’s so internal and it’s so personal.”
Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner at Plan B had optioned rights to the book and hired director Philippa Lowthorpe. The film premiered at Telluride before screening at the BFI London Film Festival; Roadside Attractions releases in the US and Lionsgate in the UK.
Foy notes that Lowthorpe was very open to her feedback on the script (which Lowthorpe co-wrote with Room’s Emma Donoghue). The actress had wanted to make some tweaks: “Like when Helen goes to see her father’s body. That was one of the bits in the book I felt was clear to me. It felt like a disassociated thing, and it wasn’t particularly written in that way at first. Philippa really took my notes on board.”
As an actress, she says, “I don’t do any emotional substitute,” such as picturing a moment of grief in her own life. But she does bring herself into every role. “I think a lot of people feel that acting is getting as far away from yourself as you can. But it’s about using yourself to understand that person you’re playing. It’s always going to be a combination.
“It’s a very difficult thing to try and explain,” she concedes, “but you can’t run away from yourself in the process of acting. It just brings you closer to yourself.”
Foy had nowhere to hide in making this film. There are no gowns and tiaras, as in her Primetime Emmy-winning performance in The Crown. “It felt like a challenge to try, because so much of it is just me. And I’m trying to communicate so much of Helen’s interior life.”
The team shot for just two weeks with the birds, Mabel One and Mabel Two, goshawks reared by trainers Lloyd and Rose Buck to star in the film. Foy dedicated many weeks before the shoot to meet the birds and start to work with them.
“I didn’t know what to expect,” she says. “I had read books about falconry but I’d never done anything like that in my life. It became a profound thing. I was never scared of Mabel One and Mabel Two when I was manning them on my wrist, but we also had Lottie the hunting bird who had a different vibe.” Foy laughs. “It was all about making my internal rhythm match the birds’ rhythm and looking after them and making sure they had a pleasant experience, too.”
The actress was eventually so comfortable with her avian co-stars that she would take the Mabels on walks around Cambridge, “just to have a little moment”. Foy shed tears the first time Mabel flew on the shoot – not just as an actor but thinking of her character. “This was a big moment for Helen, the first time this bird flew to her glove.”
Real intimacy
Foy had only a handful of shooting days with Gleeson, who plays Helen’s father, but they found a shorthand quickly. “I was helped by the fact I’ve watched so much of his work. I felt like I knew him before I did. He’s a great actor, of course, but also a warm, generous human being.”
There was no big effort needed to understand the process of the other actors on the set. “With Lindsay [Duncan, who plays Helen’s mother] and Brendan, you have these amazing actors and everyone’s sort of on the same page,” says Foy. “What we do for a living is get very, very connected to people very quickly.
“On a set you can get real intimacy, you might have conversations about your own family lives. I think all actors enjoy that.”
That openness starts at the top – in this case with director Lowthorpe, whose credits include Misbehaviour (2020) and The Other Boleyn Girl (2003).
“She is a very sensitive person, so she’s acutely aware when people are thinking or feeling things,” says Foy. “She’s always paying attention. She’s not dictatorial in any way. She’s open and welcomes ideas and pivots quickly.”
At this stage of her career, Foy is choosing projects based on a simple formula: director and script. “I don’t want to do anything for the sake of it,” she says. “There is so much going on in the world that I don’t want to add to the noise unless it’s a project people will connect with.”
Foy is now shooting Danny Boyle’s Ink, based on the play by James Graham (Dear England), which is inspired by the Murdoch newspaper empire; details of her character are under wraps. She also has Peter Glanz’s Savage House in the can, opposite Richard E Grant. “That was genuinely fun from start to finish,” she says. “Richard is a total one-off.”
Foy is also starring alongside Andrew Garfield in The Magic Faraway Tree, Ben Gregor’s adaptation of Enid Blyton’s books for Neal Street Productions and Elysian. “It was amazing spending time with all those kids,” she says, adding with a laugh: “It doesn’t have to be gut-wrenching all the time.”
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